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Articles Of Confederation Flaws

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The Articles of Confederation was an ill-thought out plan that was rushed into effect to tie together a nation that wanted to distinguish itself from its parent country. Without much time to plan, flaws are bound to be present. The main problem with this document is in its name. It called for a confederation among the states. This left little to no power for a central government, and the states were almost independent countries themselves. Due to this extremely low amount of power of a central government, there was little control over legislature and organization among the economy. These problems grew until the leaders of the country convened to revise the Articles and eventually created an entirely new document due to the inefficacy of the …show more content…

Congress had no power, so states had no reliance on a central power. States could obey or disobey any laws they wanted. No foreign affairs head was in place either. America was left with no diplomat and no head to their chicken. National government was forced to rely on states for militias, laws, and nearly everything. The process of making laws is a vital component of any government, and this makes that process extremely inefficient. With this constitution in place, all thirteen states have a vote.People were not represented equally by this one vote per state system. For example, residents of Virginia had one-tenth the voting power per capita than Delaware. It was also very difficult to pass laws due to the fact that nine out of the thirteen states had to agree to pass a bill or law. This required only five states to strong arm the rest of them, preventing legislation from being passed. Using this constitution, it was extremely easy to be blocked into a position of stagnation.The economy also faltered as a result of the Articles of Confederation. Due to the low central government, there was no way to regulate trade. This caused an extremely low amount of continuity from state to

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190 Words | 1 Pages

Although the Articles of Confederation served a great purpose and had numerous advantages and strengths, it also contained many weaknesses with some flaws. One of the weaknesses is that this agreement could not enforce laws or have the power to tax the people of the colony. Along with this, the government could also not allow each of he states to continue to follow those laws. There was also no national army or navy, no national courts, no solid leadership or power in a position to take charge, and there was only one vote for each state no matter what the size of the state is. The main reason Americans wanted to construct a weak national government was to prevent the them from gaining too much power and allowing the government to eventually

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578 Words | 3 Pages

er, the Articles placed the power in the hands of the state, which led to economic troubles; but it also led to leadership shortfall. The fact that there was no independent judiciary, no leader of foreign affairs, and an inability to deal with internal and external threats made, caused a lot of problems for America. Finally, the Articles of Confederation was ineffective in making a set of rules that made legislating under this structure inefficient. Each state had one vote, therefore, states with a large population or small population had the same weight in voting in Congress. It also took nine votes out of thirteen to approve legislation.

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841 Words | 4 Pages

Plus, some states declined to hand out taxes, so Congress did not have ways to get source of finance. The only thing they could do was to borrow money on credit. More, because Congress lacks of central leadership so that they could not keep a stable form. Each State government was given power to overturn national actions which was objectionable. Because Congress had no ability to enforce their laws, states could ignore national law without worrying punishments (The Articles of Confederation, 2015).

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219 Words | 1 Pages

The Articles of Confederation was the first plan for governing the nation. It tried to help the union become a fair union. It tried to give the states as much power as possible, but with this came many weaknesses. The biggest weakness being that the national government could not force the states to obey their laws. The national government could not tax the people or enforce laws and congress did not have a strong leadership role.

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1171 Words | 5 Pages

The absence of power given to the Continental Congress debilitated the national government. The Articles enabled Congress to affirm laws, yet no ability to apply those laws. In the event that a state did not help a government law, that state can simply neglect it. Congress had no ability to force taxes or direct exchange. Without a government court framework or an official leader, there would be no real way to implement these laws.

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959 Words | 4 Pages

A short term effect would have been difficulty to maintain an army. The states did have a way to have an army through sending delegates to serve, but due to a central government not controlling it, there would be some difficulty with keeping military situations under control. There would be very few short-term effects, but the long-term effects would have caused a lot of damage to the US. One of these effects would be the debt they had to pay off. Due to states having the option to not give any money to congress, it caused a shortage of money.

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263 Words | 2 Pages

As it applies to the Articles of Confederation there were many weaknesses in the way it went about governing the United States. For one, the loose federation of the states was too weak to act as a foundation to be considered or act as a central government. In addition the state legislatures had too much power and in turn had the ability to influence economic issues of all kinds. This strong legislature is the same one that allowed for mob ruling and actions by debtors. The Articles of confederation were also weak because the required congress to have all 13 colonies in agreement when a new tax was to be passed.

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88 Words | 1 Pages

How did the failure of the State of Franklin demonstrates the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation? First of all the, the congress was divided into 13 states and each state had one vote in congress. Congress handled many problems, like how to make the western lands made by the united states i the treaty of paris. Congress failed to solve problems between states due to taxes and boundaries. Most of the citizens felt like the government was too weak.

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778 Words | 4 Pages

The Articles of the Confederation was the first government constitution that the United States used, and, although there were strength like the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, there were major weaknesses of the Articles of the Confederation like the following: requiring 9 out of the 13 colonial votes from the representatives from different states to pass a law; having no executive and judicial branch; and the federal government being unable to impose tax revenue onto the states. Such flaws would eventually lead to the Constitution and the repeal of the articles, for the Constitution was a measure to fix the problems of the articles with a stronger government that allowed them to impose taxes and and implement new laws for a more effective government.

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724 Words | 3 Pages

The Articles of Confederation was an agreement among the thirteen original states of the United States that served as the first constitution. The Articles had first been introduced by Richard Henry Lee in the Second Continental Congress. Although the Articles of Confederation has made its contributions throughout history, the Articles, however, did not last very long and had been proven inadequate from the very start. I agree with this statement based on the examples and analysis of the Constitution I will soon provide. The Articles of Confederation were written during a time when the American people feared a strong national government.

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792 Words | 4 Pages

The Shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation. The United States of America was formed under one banner by the Articles of confederation and was guided by it through the war and its aftermath. This document was the governance behind the unified states and the ordinances that quelled the states’ disputes over the Ohio River Valley. However, despite these great accomplishments the fledgling government under the Articles encountered problems that would bring its demise.

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1121 Words | 5 Pages

The Articles of Confederation were worthless in enforcing good interstate relations because they did not give Congress the power to regulate interstate trade. This caused economic problems because under the Articles of Confederation, all the states could, and did, have their own currency, so there were many different currencies. This made interstate trade difficult. But under the Constitution, Congress has right to regulate trade between states. Commerce became easier because all the states had the same money and it was much more efficient to buy and sells things across state borders with the same currency.

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784 Words | 4 Pages

In one hand, the Articles of Confederation had a weak central government, differing form the strong central government in the Constitution. The Constitution’s government had a structure of three different branches; the legislative, executive, and judicial branch; unlike the Articles of Confederation that had no structure whatsoever. The Articles of Confederation had many problems like, the poor international trade, poor foreign relations and a weak economy in contrast to the Constitution that only had one problem, the struggle over the ratification. the Articles of Confederation achieved the Northwest Ordinance and the Northwest Territory and according to a history website, the Constitution achieved that we had a system of checks and balances, that we had a bill of rights, and, eventually, the survival of a bloody civil war intact. Lastly, the Constitution had three compromises: the Great Compromise, the Three-Fifths Compromise and the Slave Trade compromise.

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975 Words | 4 Pages

This led to hardly any improvements being made upon the system of government, and just caused the states to remain in a nonprogressive condition. The voting rules were too limiting to actually achieve anything, which stopped the colonies from being able to enhance their confederacy. Along with this, the national government had no way to enforce the laws they

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494 Words | 2 Pages

The Articles of Confederation were a document seen as the “first” constitution of the United States. This document granted the new national government power to control the military, declare war, and create treaties between the states. However, the Articles had holes in it considering the government did not have the power to tax, create laws without at least nine states’ approval, or change the Articles of Confederation without a unanimous vote. This means that the country soon fell into debt and petty arguments between state, the new government had no control. It was time for a change.

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